


Above Us Only Sky

by historymiss



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-25
Updated: 2012-06-25
Packaged: 2017-11-08 13:00:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/443458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony and Steve talk about religion, and tell varying shades of untruth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Above Us Only Sky

There's a lag, of course, between the Avengers Tower becoming fit for habitation again (what the Chitauri didn't destroy Tony's renovations rip out- Steve is beginning to learn that Stark doesn't do things by halves), and a SHIELD base doesn't really appeal to any of them after the Helicarrier. 

Instead, Tony offers them the use of his mother's old mansion, a large red-brick building that's mostly still under dustsheets when Steve arrives. Some rooms are open already, though. Steve plonks his bag down on one, then pauses and looks up. There's a cross on the wall.

Tony's moved down to his father's old workshop, and that's where Steve finds him. The air's less dusty here, and laced with a smell like ozone and old metal. Howard's presence is almost tangible. Steve can see the ghost of him in the way Tony moves his head, eyebrows raising as he catches sight of the Captain.

"Something up?" He puts down his spanner and wipes his hands on his pants, a pretty deplorable habit Steve got scolded out of.

"Tony-"

This is an awkward question, Steve is beginning to find out. 

"Tony, do you believe in God?"

"Nope." Tony folds his arms, the arc reactor casing a faint blue glow onto his skin. "Are we playing twenty questions today? 'Cause I've got some way more interesting ones for you."

Steve jerks his thumb over his shoulder, interrupting before Tony can continue that particular train of thought. "I just saw upstairs-"

"Oh, that." Tony shakes his head. "That was mom. She was raised Catholic, and, well, I guess you never really kick the habit. After she died, I never used the place and so a lot of her stuff is still around."

He shrugs. "It used to irritate the hell out of dad. He never really held with God. The whole futurist thing, I guess. We weren't close enough to ever discuss it. And me- well. There's so little evidence to go on, actual hard facts, that it was never really a question. I didn't have to think about it that hard."

There's a list of important things, it seems, and God isn't on it. Tony doesn't tell Steve about the childhood experiments with prayer (observe and report, what happens if I ask for this but not that, if I kneel here, pray this way, if I look hard enough- what will I see?), or the way he faked belief, his first stab at a public face, so that Maria would smile.

"So to you, Thor and Loki are...?"

"Aliens." Tony sounds so certain, snapping off the answer like it's the schoolroom. "They come from space, they have tech the likes of which we've never seen, they're faster and stronger than any normal human- I need to show you the readings JARVIS got during my fight with Thor, some of them are insane."

Steve laughs. "You've got an answer for everything, haven't you, Stark?"

"I'm working on it." Tony gives Steve that look, the one that makes him feel a little like he's back in the recruitment booth, all those years ago, the one Erskine had when he asked him why he wanted to fight. "But you, though- you're a believer, right? What do you think?"

There's a long silence as Steve thinks, marshalling his words carefully, each one exact.

"I know what I believe." he says eventually. "And I know that the world is much bigger and more complicated than I can understand."

Stark snorts. Steve holds up a hand. "I'm not telling you what to think, Stark. Just what I believe."

What built, layer on layer, like a shell in those nights spent wishing for a body so much stronger than the one he lived in, those days in Germany, that vigil by his mother's bed. Those prayers can't have been wasted, vanishing to empty air. Even if his miracle, when it had come, had been out of a bottle and cost far too much in blood.

Words aren't really enough for that, and Steve's bad enough with them as it is. He sighs, but it's more like a groan, an admission of defeat.

"I don't think they're gods either." 

Tony nods. "Anyway, you saw Loki. What kind of god would wear a hat like that? Mom would have had a fit if she got to heaven and saw him."

Steve laughs, and that's miracle enough for both of them.


End file.
